Recently, three different scholars announced about the same time, and independently of one another, the discovery that periodical enrollments were made in Egypt under the Roman empire, and that the period was not of fifteen years, as in the later system of indictions, but of fourteen years. The same Greek term is used in the Egyptian documents and in Luke to indicate the census: they were called “Enrollments,” Apographai.
Mr. Kenyon of the British Museum had slightly the priority in briefly declaring that these “Enrollments” obeyed a cycle of fourteen years; but Dr. Wilcken followed him within a month or two with an elaborate paper, and shortly afterwards Dr. Viereck with another, discussing their period, nature and purpose.1 The three papers are the authority for what is here stated on the subject.
The facts relating to the “Enrollments” in Egypt are deduced from the actual census papers, many of which have been found (usually in a more or less fragmentary condition). The census was always taken after the end of the year to which it belongs; thus, for example, a census paper dated in the end of the year A.D. 90-91 contains a statement of the facts required for the enrollment of 89-90, and so on. The purpose evidently was to include in each enrollment all children born before the end of the first year of the census period, which we shall henceforth call the periodic year. All dates in these documents are given according to the Egyptian way of reckoning; and the Egyptian year, which began on the twenty-ninth day of August, was at the basis of the whole census system in Egypt. It is proved that enrollments were made for the years ending in the summer of A.D. 90, 104, 118, 132 and so on till 230. An enrollment also took place under Vespasian, but its date is not fixed by the evidence. There can, however, be no doubt that Dr. Viereck is right in placing it for the year 75-76.2
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Author: William M. Ramsay
Keywords: Census, Enrolment, Enrollment, Quirinius, Cyrenius, Registration, Bethlehem census, Bethlehem enrollment, Bethlehem enrolment, Enrolled, Enroled, Taxation, Taxed
Bible reference(s): Luke 2:1-5
Source: Was Christ Born in Bethlehem?, (1898).
Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.